


Running With Scissors

by Fenris



Series: Running in the Dark [2]
Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, character insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-06
Updated: 2011-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-16 03:26:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenris/pseuds/Fenris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Roche Laurie decides to take on a partner. It doesn't end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running With Scissors

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to Awake in the Dark, in which Laurie took the Roche case and lost her mind instead of Rorschach. And became a pet owner.

The other Crimebusters still don't seem to know quite what to do about her. Or what to say to her.

The Comedian is oddly silent on the subject of Laurie's new game rules, although sometimes she catches him watching her with a strange, speculative look on his face.

A girlfriend who inventively kills degenerate slime every chance she gets contains the same type and number of particles as a good little girlfriend who follows in Mommy's footsteps. Jon has nothing to say about her new direction.

Ozymandias engages her in several discussions about privately administered capital punishment and its effectiveness as a deterrent. He seems genuinely interested in her new philosophy. But she can see that it's never more than an intellectual exercise for him. He couldn't care less about individual victims except as a vague concept that he can contemplate and pity from afar. Ozymandias wants to understand and direct the engine of human society. He's uninterested in the individual cogs that make up the machine.

Nite Owl makes a few hilarious attempts to try and get her to see that what she's doing is wrong and will, quote, "destroy you inside", and that it won't make anything better in the long run.

Laurie laughs in his sweet earnest face and informs him that as far as she's concerned, a dead rapist is the only kind that you can be one hundred percent sure will never reoffend. And in her book that makes things a lot better in the long run for the women who would have been his future victims. Then she blows cigarette smoke in his face and tells him to grow the fuck up.

She can’t see Rorschach’s expression, of course, but like the Comedian he's strangely quiet on the subject and she thinks he might just secretly approve of what she does now. His approval is of absolutely no interest to her except for the fact that it suggests she could do worse than ask him for an assist if she ever needs backup on a large takedown.

Laurie thinks that Rorschach might have an inkling himself of the way the world really works, and that part of him might want the clarity and freedom she now has. If that’s true, she’ll be happy to show him the way; the more dedicated people working for the cause the better, after all.

When she gets word of a sex trafficking ring operating out of a defunct shipping company's storage building not far from the docks, she decides to leave a message in Rorschach's trashcan mail drop and see what happens.

The first time they work together goes well. Better than she expected, really. He’s inventive and more than competent in a fight, at times showing real brilliance. He won't kill, but doesn’t prevent her from doing so. In fact, he seems simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by the way she dispatches the deserving to their just rewards. Laurie figures that all he needs is a little encouragement, really, and he’ll be ready to do his part in truly cleaning up the streets.

After they work a few more cases together she notes with approval that he’s showing a higher level of brutality in his fighting. She assumes that's because his owl-faced Jiminy Cricket conscience isn’t there to inhibit his style by constantly reminding him that scumbags are human beings too, and that it’s not nice to cripple them permanently while apprehending them.

Rorschach's skittish, of course, and at first won’t come within a foot of her while they work. But he seems to relax a little bit after he sees that she’s all business now. The fact that she’s not wearing the old vinyl and spandex hooker fetish gear anymore probably has something to do with it, too. Her new outfit is far more practical. And regardless of what her mother taught her about their weapon value, she doesn't miss the spike-heeled come-fuck-me boots one bit.

It’s not a regular thing, and she’d bet a thousand bucks that Nite Owl knows nothing about it. The idea that she’s the crime-fighting equivalent of 'the other woman' amuses her to no end.

After the sixth time Rorschach works a case with her, he finally deigns to compliment her on her new drive and purity of purpose. Unspoken but implicit in his praise is the fact that he's obviously pleased that her apotheosis seems to have purged her of her previous whorish affectations and urges. Laurie shakes her head and figures she'll have to set him straight about that little delusion one day, but for right now she can't be bothered.

That day rolls around sooner than she expected.

It happens the eighth time they work together. They join forces to clean out the holdings of a pimp that Laurie's had her eye on for a few months now; a charming individual who specializes in procuring underage talent, both male and female. As she expects, Rorschach is eager to lend a hand when she tells him that she could use his help taking down the dozen plus well-muscled, well-armed, and ill-tempered individuals with whom this pimp usually surrounds himself.

Laurie appreciates the irony of the fact that their raid is happening the evening before Valentine's Day. The resulting newspaper coverage should be just perfect. Too bad the catchphrase 'Valentine's Day Massacre' has already been taken, but she has faith in the fourth estate that some reporter will come up with an equally catchy header to plaster above the photo of the tableau she intends to paint with her conquered quarry.

The raid goes well and between them they leave a detritus of broken (and in some cases, dead) thugs. And, because Laurie gets to him first, one very dead pedophile pimp.

Rorschach watches as she gets artistic with the dead procurer, unzipping the body like a garment bag and rearranging its insides with an eye to the memorable scene she wants the crime scene photographers to record and the pimp's fellow criminals to discuss between themselves in hushed nervous whispers.

The more inventively she arranges things, the more agitated Rorschach becomes, until finally he steps up and moves between her and the flayed body.

"Spectre. If you want to honestly serve justice, you have to adhere to some sort of code. We can't play in their entrails like idiot children, there has to be some kind of dignity to what we do. Wallowing in blood and offal like this merely brings you down to the cockroaches' level. You're better than that."

Her laugh is sharp as old vinegar. She cocks her head at him, still chuckling, and pushes him gently out of her way to resume putting the finishing touches on her artwork.

"Oh, Inky, who says you've got no sense of humor? Thanks for the vote of confidence, short stuff, but you're talking to the wrong girl about justice and dignity. There's no justice here, and I'm not looking to deliver any." She looks up at him from her work, her eyes suddenly incandescent with rage.

 _"Justice,"_ she hisses, her voice full of cordite and acid, "would have been that piece of shit Grice getting flattened by a bus on his way to kidnap that little girl. Justice would have been little Blair growing up, going to high school, senior prom, getting married and having kids, the whole nine yards. That would have been justice. What I do is _not_ about justice."

He takes a step back when he sees her mouth curve into the same serene and chilling doll's smile that he last saw on the night he and Nite Owl watched her feed a pair of skinny dogs and go mad. Smiling sweetly at him, she says, "This is about vengeance. I thought you understood that."

After she finishes, they leave the building and make their way to a pay phone where Spectre calls in a tip to the newspapers and the cops, in that order. The evening's still young, though, and she's energized and nowhere near ready to call it a night. Rorschach follows silently as they walk the familiar labyrinth of alleys toward a cluster of darkened office buildings where they can stop and decide what to do next with the evening.

As they walk, Laurie considers their options. They could patrol looking for random violence, but that's more Rorschach's and Nite Owl's style. Laurie prefers to operate off of existing leads and intelligence. Simply wandering the night and hoping to get lucky isn't an efficient use of time as far as she's concerned.

Watching Rorschach she can tell that, despite his earlier misgivings about her treatment of the dead pimp, and her little lecture, he's still revved up from the evening's activities himself. He walks briskly, swinging his arms a little, obviously still high on adrenaline and victory; and equally obviously, he doesn't know what to do with it since there's no one handy to fight.

Spectre knows what to do with it, though. Drunk on tonight's success and with no immediate goal toward which to direct her energy, she's feeling electrified and restless and more than a little horny. And she wants, for a change, to touch and taste something human and flawed instead of Jon's transcendent smooth blue perfection. Laurie decides that it might be time to burn off some excess energy and find out exactly what lies underneath that tightly belted trench coat.

As she considers the idea, she watches Rorschach move around restlessly, shaking tension from his shoulders and arms, turning sinuously and bouncing on the balls of his feet as he looks her way. And now she's really getting curious about what's under all those layers and whether he does know what to do with it. The answering warmth and pulse between her legs agrees and she smiles, narrowing her eyes.

Looking around, she sees that the area they're in now is pretty isolated and completely deserted. They're in the middle of a mid-winter thaw and it's unseasonably warm; it's cold out but not freezing. Right here should be fine. Her smile becomes a grin.

_I think maybe Inky's going to get lucky tonight. Unless he pulls his prima donna Puritan preacher act, in which case I can at least savor the pissy indignation._

Slowing down, she turns and stops him with a hand on his upper arm. And it says a lot for how much he's relaxed around her that he merely stops and looks at her. Five months ago he'd have shied back as if burned by her touch. Laurie steps in close, smiling, and says, "You know, I think we're both a little too keyed up right now. Our concentration will be a hell of a lot better if we do a few relaxation exercises before moving on."

Purring, she slips her hand under his scarf and teases one end of it out of the trench coat. "Come on. Let's burn off some of this excess energy. All this fun has got to have your juices flowing at least a little bit."

He looks at her like she just sprouted an extra head, which was speaking Sanskrit.

"What?" His voice is flat and cautious. "What are you talking about?"

"You're the detective. Figure it out, Marlowe." She slides an arm around his waist and rests her hand in the small of his back. It takes him by surprise and he freezes, allowing her to step in and mold herself to him. Because of her height, it almost plants his face in her cleavage.

For an instant as she's plastered up against him, Laurie feels a rigid tension thrumming along the lean lines of his body and she's pretty sure that she also feels a response stir below the belt. It seems that there is indeed part of him that's interested, or at least curious. Then his hands come up and grab her shoulders and he shoves her roughly away.

“Still a whore,” he spits out, voice unsteady and full of venom. “Thought you’d learned by now, become better than that.”

Laurie gives him a wolfish grin. "What, just because I'm now serious about ridding my corner of the Earth of scumbags, I'm not allowed to have some fun in between bodies?"

She watches him fume in silence, unsure of what to do next. Circling him, she laughs as he warily turns with her. So close she can feel his body heat, she leans in and speaks to him, her voice deceptively mild, "Oh, I see. I'm a big degenerate slutcake because _I'm_ not afraid of what's in _my_ pants and I actually have the nerve to use it from time to time. Well, I hate to break it to you, Inky, but I'll let you in on a secret."

She lays her face against his and whispers, lips brushing the mask where the round outline of his ear shows. "Sex feels good, assuming you're doing it right. And if you have sex, a big hand does not pop out of the clouds to shoot a lightning bolt up your ass. As long as you're both aware and of age, nothing happens except that you've had some fun and you're a little more relaxed."

Laurie bites his ear through the mask and grins when he jerks and hisses. But this time he doesn't move away. "Trust me, you could use some relaxing. You keep clenching this hard and you're going to bust something major before you're forty. Your heart's going to pop its clogs one day while you're in the checkout line at Stop & Shop and you'll just keel right over, boom."

He's still for a long moment and she starts to think that he's actually going to go with it. Then he stiffens and growls, stepping away from her and putting several feet of space between them. His voice is rough with anger, but she can also hear the tremor underlying it as he snarls at her.

"Appreciate your concern for my health, but don't need what you're peddling. Keep your hands to yourself from now on and aim your weakness elsewhere." And with that, he wheels abruptly and starts to walk away.

And it's the patronizing, lofty way in which he says it that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. She's not going to let him stalk away bristling with superiority and probably nursing a big guilty hard on under that grotty trench coat of his to boot.

When she'd propositioned him a minute ago she was at least partly joking, just to hear the scandalized indignation in his voice as he flipped his lid over the suggestion that he might want to cavort in perversion with her. But hearing him talk down to her from his perceived moral high ground, like she's just confirmed his favorite theory that all women are whores at heart angers her far more than she'd have guessed it would.

And all of a sudden Laurie really, really wants to wipe that snotty superior tone out of his voice, wants to hear him admit that he's human and has a libido, wants to hear what he sounds like when he gives in to his body's dictates and he's pounding away at someone. For once this repressed little fucker is going to own up to the fact that he indeed has a dick, like every other man on the planet.

As he reaches the L-turn at the end of the alley in mid-dignified retreat, she blindsides him, smashing into him and slamming them both against the rough brick of the building.

It catches him completely flatfooted because, regardless of what he might think of her personally, he doesn't expect an attack from a fellow mask. Especially not from someone who he's been working alongside. As she takes advantage of his momentary astonishment to seize and lock one of his arms up behind him, she figures that if nothing else this will teach him a valuable lesson about blindly trusting his coworkers. He's definitely become too complacent working alone with Nite Owl for so long.

Her attack is perfectly timed and before he figures out that he's really in trouble she has him pinned, off balance and unable to break out of her hold. (A year ago she would never have had the strength to do this, even with the arm lock and his being off balance. But the past six months of dedicated training have made her far stronger than she used to be.)

She grins in savage satisfaction because he's always underestimated her abilities and it's just so damn satisfying right now to have him trapped and in a nerve hold, his arm locked twitching and helpless behind his back. (Laurie actually has Ozymandais to thank for the hold, which he had taught her a while ago. She'd tried not to be too insulted at Ozy's obvious surprise at how quickly she mastered the trick, paralyzing his arm on the fourth try.)

Rorschach snorts and thrashes and kicks like a wild horse, but the arm lock plus her advantage of height, leverage, and surprise has him pinned securely against the wall. Even with her improved strength, she wouldn't have succeeded with someone heavier; Dan or the Comedian for example, but Rorschach doesn't have the sheer bulk needed to break out of it by weight and muscle alone. Hell, he probably only outweighs her by ten or fifteen pounds.

Struggling furiously, he roars, "Spectre! Stop this! _Get off me!_ "

Laughing at the indignation in his voice because it means he's still not taking this seriously enough, she grabs his scarf with her unoccupied hand and pulls it away from his neck. Then, just to emphasize the point that it's not always safe to call a woman a whore to her face, she bites the crook of his neck hard enough to taste blood and grunts as he convulses and almost gets loose.

Her free hand then worms its way inside the trench coat, under his suit jacket and slides down over his crotch. Rorschach freezes in shock. He's also rock-hard under her fingers and she laughs.

“What's this, stud? I thought so. Don’t blame me because you’re scared shitless of what’s inside my pants--and what’s inside yours. Plus, I don’t recall asking you for any money, so who’re you calling a whore?”

With a choked cry of distress he thrusts against her hand at the same time he tries desperately to break her hold on him. But she has too much of an advantage and he can't do it. Laurie grins in ferocious triumph as she massages his hard on through the tented purple fabric, running her nails lightly over it. He jerks in her hands as she does, whining high and tight in the back of his throat.

 _"Bet you're going to take me more seriously after this, buddy boy,"_ she thinks, reaching for the zipper of his pants.

As soon as he realizes that she actually has him trapped and he can't get away, things change. He's still hard, but the next cry he makes as she unzips his pants and slips her hand inside, a strangled " _No!_ ", takes on a different tone, one of panic. He writhes against her and there's a hitch in his voice that sounds like a half-sob as she runs her hand over and around his straining cock. The inflection of his voice changes, becomes higher and younger-sounding as his struggling becomes even more frantic. " _No! Nonono--_ "

At the note of real terror in his voice, something inside her twists and the savage joy of dominating the situation and teaching this judgmental little prick a lesson about himself curdles into something scalding that wants to become shame as she realizes that he's far, far more fucked up than she had imagined.

What's even worse is the realization that, despite the burgeoning remorse she feels about fucking with the little head case's delicate sensibilities, part of her still finds this terribly exciting. And that part of her wants to keep going, wants to jerk him off and force him to come all over her hand and the grimy wall, or to goad him into fucking her because she knows it would be sharp and hard and filthy and _great_ and he'd never get over it. It would leave her mark on him forever.

But she's not that person and this little joke has unexpectedly veered into something repugnant to her. And to take this any further would make her the worst kind of hypocrite. She's a predator now, but not of damaged children, and Laurie realizes suddenly that that's what she's touching right now.

She removes her hand and eases back enough to give him an opening and he takes it, getting his foot up and braced against the wall and pushing them both violently away from it. As she lets go and jumps back, he stumbles away, panting, zipping up his pants with shaking hands.

More shaken than she wants to admit, certainly more than she wants him to see, Laurie covers it with a savage smile and says, "Wow, you must be a lot of fun in the sack. Poor Dan, he has my sympathy."

"It's not--" He chokes, and hisses at her. "We're not--"

"No? Figures. You're even bigger idiots than I thought you were."

He walks away, then stops at the mouth of the alley and turns to face her, outlined starkly in the reflected street light and faint neon. His expression is hidden and unreadable, of course. Voice hoarse and low, he grates out, "Keep your distance from now on. Don't contact me again." And he's gone.

Laurie stares thoughtfully after him and shakes her head. It's too bad; it had been nice to have someone else helping her deliver shots of penicillin to this terminally infected city. But from his little speech earlier tonight about dignity and justice, it's now obvious to her that Rorschach doesn't have the stomach for it that she'd thought he did.

She realizes now that Rorschach is exactly like Nite Owl; a scared little boy dressing up to play hero, just a little angrier and in a scarier mask. _They deserve each other,_ she thinks and shrugs. In the end it matters little to her. It's time to get back to what really does matter.

_Time's a-wasting. Those child molesters aren't just going to cut their own balls off, are they?_

She turns the other way and walks off down the alley into the dark, silent as a stalking jaguar, a beautiful and deadly avatar of the city's decayed vestigial conscience.

Fred and Barney greet her at the door and cluster around her in a tail-wagging flurry, eager for their treats. After they're fed, she rumples their ears and smiles as they lick traces of blood from her face.

***

Rorschach returns to his apartment and in the privacy of his tiny dilapidated room, unmasked, he spends a long time looking at Walter's ashen, lost face in the grimy mirror.

***

Circling his kitchen clutching a half-empty shot glass, orbiting the open bottle of Glenfiddich on his table like an angry, slightly tipsy satellite, Dan isn't really sure what to do. He knows that Rorschach’s been assisting Spectre, is out working a case with her right now, and doesn’t know how upset (angry) he wants to be about it.

Dan’s not an idiot; he knows exactly why Laurie occasionally asks Rorschach to help her with a case but never asks Nite Owl. He likes knowing that she isn’t risking her life alone out there, but hates the idea that she’s encouraging Rorschach to indulge in increasingly greater acts of violence, perhaps even leading him to kill.

When his partner slinks up from the basement like a feral dog and comes into the kitchen trembling and reeking of blood, Dan doesn’t give in to his first angry impulse and demand an explanation as Rorschach slips out of his blood-splashed trench coat and tosses it over a kitchen chair. After taking a good, long look at his silent partner Dan simply sighs, puts down his glass and strides forward to take him into his arms, holding him until he mostly stops shaking.

His eyes darken and his lips thin when he unwinds the scarf and sees the deep bruise and ring of teeth marks at the base of Rorschach’s neck. But he also knows that any explanations should wait for later. Whatever sins his partner may have committed tonight, he’s obviously paying for them.

Then he gasps in shock when Rorschach pulls off his mask. Stony pale blue-gray eyes hold his fast as his partner tells Dan his name is Walter. A second shock comes hard on the heels of the first when Walter pulls him down into a fervent high-strung kiss, the wiry arms around his neck shaking in a delicate terror as Dan hesitates, then kisses him back.

After a few minutes of tentative exploratory caresses, Walter seems to come to a decision and calmly, so calmly that it frightens Dan a little, leads him in silence upstairs to the bedroom.

And in his partner's bed as he cries out in pleasure under the press of Daniel's body and the devastating touch of his hands, Walter sees his own face reflected for the second time tonight, far more softly this time, in the loving regard of Daniel’s eyes.

***

An hour or so before sunrise, it's as still and dark as a painting of midnight and the streets outside are as quiet as they ever get.

Walter wakes up outside of the covers in darkness, shivering and cold. He ducks back under the blankets and burrows in against Daniel, seeking more than one type of warmth.

Mostly asleep, Daniel turns and slides an arm over him, draws him in close under his chin and murmurs unintelligible reassurances into his hair. Walter thinks about the terrifying and overwhelming thing they have done together tonight, and tells himself that he made the right choice.

As dawn bleaches the night out of the sky, Walter lies safe for the moment, finally at home against Daniel’s warm side. He thinks about the empty spaces left by vanished children and the unfettered madness dancing in Laurie’s hungry implacable eyes. And it occurs to him that the dark spirit that animates this beautiful and terrible city occasionally demands sacrifices other than Kitty Genovese.


End file.
